Spent a couple hours this morning on the 83 Fuji Cruiser. First challenge was the seat tube and chain guard decals. These were both removed from the bicycle at some point. I am trying to get the color as close as possible to the current decals, and this has proven to be a real pain and ink waister but, I’m very close now. I used Photoshop and Microsoft Word to create the decals and then manually cut them out with scissors.
I got the sticker paper from Onlinelabels.com; quality stuff. I am finding the OL177WI weatherproof gloss white paper to work the best. The OL177CK (or clear back) seems ok too. Either way, do not touch the printed part with your fingers regardless how long you let it dry; otherwise you will leave finger prints.
The decals I got from Velocals, while a quality print job, were way off in regards to color and the spread between the two vertical “Fuji” texts on the seat-tube decal is too narrow. So, when you wrap them on the seat-tube you can never line them up on each side. Keep in mind I’m trying not strip the current surviving decals even though the frame has many chips and scratches. A survivor is only a survivor once, right? If I did strip them, then I would repaint the frame and likely use the Velocals after requesting a re-size for the seat-tube decal. Then all the decals would match, but not be their original color.
Next, I got to work mounting the chain guard. I forgot I had yet to find a 40t chain wheel and the 44t on there made the chain guard a tad too small. Thankfully I had a 42t and I can make it work with a little tweaking of the mounting hardware. Once I find a 40t gold Sugino chain wheel it should be a perfect fit.
